This Week In Food: Deep Fall

A beloved Bernal Mexican restaurant is expanding to the Chase Center, a rising star chef's new spot has found a home on Upper Fillmore, and Jupiter Room appears close to opening on Upper Polk, all in This Week In Food.

Beloved Bernal Mexican spot El Buen Comer is expanding with a second location in Thrive City at the Chase Center. As the SF Business Times reports, they are moving into the space vacated earlier this year by the short-lived Taco Primo — which was from the folks behind The Snug and Little Shucker. El Buen Comer chef-owner Isabel Pazos tells the Business Times that she's hoping to open the new location by early December.

Over in Japantown, the luxe Thai tasting menu spot at the Kimpton Hotel Enso, hed 11, which I sang the praises of in 2024, is pivoting to a more casual concept, becoming a new location of downtown sister restaurant hed Very Thai. As the team explained in an email, much of the restaurant team will remain in place, but they decided that as dining habits have changed, "guests are looking for food that is approachable, consistent, and easy to fit into everyday life." The last hed 11 dinners will be served on October 30, and the grand opening of the new hed Very Thai will be on November 13.

Good Morning 96, the exciting sounding first restaurant from former Rich Table chef de cuisine Gizela Ho, has found a home via the Upper Fillmore Revitalization Project of billionaire Neil Mehta. The restaurant now plans to open in early 2027 in the former Ten Ichi sushi space at 2235 Fillmore — which closed under some contentious circumstances two years ago following an eviction by Mehta. The menu, Ho tells the Chronicle, will lean into the "super playful" with influences from Guam, California, and Hong Kong, including things like a chicken wing stuffed with shrimp and scallop, and a crab salad with spaghetti squash, celtuce, Oro Blanco, red curry, and smoked trout crumble.

We don't have any definitive opening date to share, but it seems like Jupiter Room is getting close to debuting on Upper Polk. We first learned about the project a full year ago, and it's the hotly anticipated new solo deal from acclaimed former Aphotic bar guy Trevin Hutchins headed into the former Lord Stanley space at 2065 Polk, with a focus on classic cocktails and martinis in particular. The website has been getting tricked out (it just says "late 2026"), and this week some sleek new cocktail videos have appeared on Instagram, including one previewing a delicious looking Oatmeal Old Fashioned, that comes with an oatmeal cream pie garnish. Hutchins also shares a very eclectic Spotify playlist, by way of a vibe preview. Stay tuned for more details.

Ms. Tablehopper alerts us to the "coming soon" Instagram postings of Bare Bones, a self-described "rostisserie joynt" with a chicken logo that is coming to the former Bearing West space at 2325 Taraval Street (at 33rd Avenue). They are aiming for a soft opening next Thursday, October 29, and the menu will be focused on whole and half chickens with choice of sauce, as well as porchetta, and salads, and both chicken and porchetta can come as a sandwich.

And the Chronicle reports that Vallejo's only fine-dining restaurant, Michael Warring, will be closing on December 5, but ultimately reopening at some point in chef Michael Warring's own home in Benicia. Warring and his wife have been planning to relocate the intimate restaurant to their home for some time, and they're now at work on an ambitious remodel of their garage to make this happen.

Chronicle restaurant critic MacKenzie Chung Fegan has a new starred review this week of ambitious new Thai restaurant Saam, from celebrity chef Thitid “Ton” Tassanakajohn. Fegan writes that Saam "pushes boundaries with its vivid funk and challenging spice levels and embraces a roving, pan-regional approach to Thai dishes." And, she says, "Saam surpasses its recent contemporaries, and is the Bay Area’s best new Thai restaurant in some time." Even so, and this might be an indication of how stingy she plans to be with the stars, it gets two stars, signifying "great."